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If Samira and Jack would get asked what trait they didn’t like about each other, their answers couldn’t be more different from each other. Jack would say that she kept thinking she wasn’t good enough for him and that he thought that it was unhealthy how much she tried to please him.
Samira would’ve said he was too unorganized.
A lot of books, a lot of trinkets and boxes in every cupboard and cabinet. All without being properly sorted. For him, it was a system. For her, it was chaos. She didn’t want to re-organize his apartment. She had her own place and it was his business what he wanted to do in his own apartment.
But God did it annoy her watching him look for something he needed for at least an hour.
So he finally listened to her and got a new cabinet so he can find a new system.
Buying the cabinet was the easiest part. Building it was a completely different thing. He was pretty confident about it, telling her that he did it many times before. And it looked alright.
Samira was already clearing out the boxes from the old cabinet, asking him every time if he still needed the things in it. They already got two piles. One with things to keep, one with things to get rid off. It worked.
“You know, putting all your stuff in drawers and calling it a day isn’t organizing.”
“It is if I can find everything,” Jack disagreed.
“You don’t. That’s the issue.”
They were a good team. He sat on the floor and built the cabinet, she sorted.
When she cleared the last box and he was securing the last door from the cabinet she found something in the back. A smaller box, different from the others and clearly meant to be hidden.
“Hey, Jack… There’s something else.”
“Huh?” He didn’t look up as she pulled out the box.
“A box.”
“Probably some old stuff.”
She opened the box and what she found… explained things and at the same time caused more questions.
A small stuffed zebra, a piece of paper and then an… ultrasound picture. She knew what it meant. She was a doctor and definitely not stupid. Must have been an early pregnancy by the looks of it.
Jack looked up the moment she took a closer look.
“Put it down.”
It sounded harsher than he intended. He was never loud or harsh when it came to Samira. He swore himself to treat her and women in his life well. And now he had this harsh edge in his voice?
She didn’t flinch, wasn’t shocked. She heard that tone before when he talked to interns or students. He was a boss at work. She understood. She was just surprised that he reacted like that. And at the same time it made sense. It seemed to be a nerve she hit.
“I’m sorry.”
Jack sighed and shook his head.
“No, I’m sorry...”
He sat down on the floor next to her, watching how she now held that ultrasound picture in her hand.
It came into her mind again.
“We thought we were going to have a kid once.”
“Is… that what you meant?”
He knew what she meant without even really thinking about it. Jack kept thinking about that moment since he first said it to Samira. He didn’t think it was a mistake in that sense. But the day he said it, he immediately realized that he said it. And from then on Jack didn’t know if it was the right thing. If it might’ve been too much or wrong or if she even wanted to hear about his past life with his wife. So he kept thinking about it. Overthinking. And now, that she looked at him without even saying what she meant, he knew.
So he nodded.
“Yeah.” Jack looked at the picture in her hand. “She was pregnant.”
Samira didn’t ask. There wasn’t much to ask when his face already showed so much. No smirk, no laugh. Just his serious face. The way the corners of his mouth slipped down, his hands shaking, while he swallowed hard.
“I guess that’s why that girl got to me. I knew she wasn’t ours. I knew that. But for two hours I couldn’t stop thinking that someone was going to leave that hospital without their child.”
Right.
The girl.
It has been just a week and even though Jack didn’t talk about it, Samira knew it was still a sensitive topic.
He clearly kept avoiding the topic “dayshift” since then. When Robby asked him the next day how it went, he just said “fine” and that was it.
Samira carefully took the small zebra out of the box. Clearly older, the fur was already a little rough. A toy meant for a little child. It was small enough to fit into a little hand, the crooked ear made it even sweeter.
She looked at it, then back at Jack.
He was staring at it too.
For a moment, he didn’t say anything.
Then he reached out and carefully took it from her.
His fingers closed around the little zebra almost automatically.
“I bought this two days after we found out.”
“The zebra?”
“Yeah.”
There was the faintest smile on his face. Almost a little embarrassed.
“I don’t think I even thought about whether we’d need it. I just…” He shrugged. “I saw it and bought it.”
She smiled softly. “You were excited.”
“Yeah. Apparently I was.”
He sighed.
“I never really planned on being a dad. Neither of us did, really. We always said the same thing when someone asked us. If it happens, it happens.” He looked at the picture in Samira’s hand. “We weren’t trying. We weren’t not trying. It just… happened.”
She nodded.
“But when that test turned positive… I remember sitting on the bathroom floor with her. We just stared at that stupid little test. And I remember thinking, Okay. This is happening.”
“Sometimes life just throws a curveball.”
“I hadn’t planned for it. I hadn’t spent my whole life wanting it like some others might do. But suddenly… I wanted it. And when we saw this…”
He picked up the ultrasound picture from Samira.
“It was barely anything. Just this tiny, tiny shape. But it made it real. I remember looking at it and thinking that in a few months from then, I’d be holding this tiny little person in my arms.”
Jack looked at the zebra in his hand.
“And I thought this tiny person would be holding this. I was terrified. Not because I didn’t want it. Because suddenly I realized I actually did.”
His voice became quieter.
“I thought I was going to be a dad.” His gaze wandered back to the tiny shape in the picture. “We knew it was a girl. She didn’t have a name yet. My wife and I argued about names all the time.”
A tiny smile appeared on Jack’s lips.
“I had a list. She had a list. Neither of us liked the other’s.”
The smile suddenly disappeared again.
“I remember thinking that I had absolutely no idea how to raise a daughter. I have an older brother. Two nephews. There was never really a girl my age or younger in my family. But God… I still thought about it. I thought about that a lot. What she’d look like. What she’d be like. Whether she would have hated me when she was a teenager. I’d probably deserve it. And I had this picture in my head…”
“What picture?”
“Me holding her.” He looked up at Samira. “She’d be tiny. Really tiny. I’d have her against my chest and I’d probably be terrified I’d hold her wrong or she’d start crying and I wouldn’t know why. I didn’t even know how you were supposed to keep something that small alive without an instruction manual. But… I wanted to learn.”
Jack started rubbing his face.
“We were past the point where we thought something was going to happen. We thought…we were safe. I thought I was going to meet her.”
His jaw tightened.
Samira didn’t correct him.
Didn’t tell him that there was never really such a thing as safe.
Didn’t tell him that sometimes pregnancies ended without anyone being able to explain why.
Because he knew.
She knew that he knew.
Jack was a doctor. Has been for a long time.
Logically, he knew that there wasn’t really a line where nothing would happen anymore.
But the brain did weird things sometimes.
So instead she listened.
He deserved it.
Jack kept brushing his thumb over the zebra’s fur.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then, very quietly, she asked, “What happened?”
Jack’s finger stopped moving.
He didn’t answer immediately.
He could talk about his wife.
That was the strange thing.
He could say her name. He could tell stories about her. Some of his colleagues knew about her. Robby knew. Shen knew. People knew she had existed at some point. People knew she died, knew that Jack had been married.
He could talk about some parts of the life they had.
The miscarriage was different.
He couldn’t even say the word.
He couldn’t even name it as that, what it really was.
A miscarriage.
He swallowed.
“One day, she started bleeding. She was showering… I was… in the kitchen. At some point I was wondering why she took so long. And when I…looked for her I found her there. Under the spray.”
He stared somewhere past the box, but he wasn’t really looking at it anymore.
“There was so much blood…”
Jack’s jaw tightened again.
“For a second, I thought I was going to lose both of them.”
He closed his eyes.
“I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just…” He stopped and rubbed his thumb against the zebra’s ear. “I got her out of the shower, wrapped her into towels and got her to the hospital.”
His breathing changed.
“And then they wouldn’t let me stay with her.”
Samira’s brow furrowed.
“Why?”
“They had to make sure I hadn’t done anything.”
The words came out flat.
Like he had said them before.
“It’s protocol. If a pregnant woman comes in bleeding, they have to make sure there’s no violence from the husband involved.” Jack swallowed. “They didn’t know me. Didn’t know us. So they separated us.”
His eyes dropped.
“I understood why. But I hated it.”
Samira carefully took his hand, brushing her thumb over his knuckles.
“I remember sitting there thinking she might be dying and I wasn’t even allowed in the room. I kept thinking that my wife might be dying and someone had decided I was a potential threat before they’d even let me see her.” His voice cracked slightly. “And I? I couldn’t do anything. Eventually they let me see her. She was crying. So was I. And I…”
He stopped.
For a moment, Jack seemed to fight whatever came next.
“I held her. She cried so hard, my shirt was…drenched. I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that before. My entire…shirt was soaked.”
Samira’s expression softened.
Jack noticed.
And suddenly, for the first time since he started talking, he seemed almost embarrassed.
He looked away from her.
“Sorry.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
His shoulders lifted slightly.
“I just…”
He rubbed a hand over his face again, a tear now running down his cheek which he desperately tried to wipe away.
“I don’t usually…”
“Jack.”
She waited until he finally looked at her again.
“You don’t have to be sorry for crying.”
“I know.”
But he said it like he didn’t quite believe it.
For a moment, Jack almost looked like he was uncomfortable with himself.
He was used to being the person who stayed calm.
The veteran.
The doctor.
The man who knew what to do.
Not this.
Not a man sitting on his livingroom floor seven months into a relationship, holding a tiny zebra he’d bought for a daughter he never met, telling another woman how he once cried until his shirt was soaked through.
His wife had seen him like that but it felt like that was a different thing.
Samira was seeing him now.
And somehow for some reason that felt terrifying.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“You don’t have to know.”
There wasn’t any pity in her expression.
No discomfort.
No judgement.
Just her.
Samira.
The realization seemed to hit him slowly.
It was just her.
Just Samira sitting beside him, holding his hand.
He looked at their hands before turning his palm upward and held hers.
“I was so scared,” he admitted.
It was barely audible.
“I thought I was going to lose her. And then I thought I lost our baby…”
Jack’s voice broke on the last word.
He looked away, almost instinctively.
But she didn’t try to make him look at her.
“I couldn’t stop crying. I just kept thinking…” He stopped to breathe, but the breath just shook. “I kept thinking that I’d almost lost her. And then we lost the baby and I–”
His voice broke completely.
Jack looked down, quickly wiping beneath one eye with the heel of his hand.
“Fuck. Fuck…”
Another breath.
But it didn’t help.
Another tear slipped down his cheek.
Jack wiped it away immediately, almost annoyed at himself.
“Sorry. God, I’m so sorry–”
“You don’t have to be.”
He nodded, but another tear followed, but he didn’t try to hide that one.
For several seconds he just sat there, staring at the little zebra in his hands.
“You know, you never have to explain your past. I will never force you to tell me about your wife or your time in the military or your childhood. Never. But whenever you want to tell me about it, I will listen to you. You can tell me every detail or only vague stories. Doesn’t matter. I’ll listen. If you need advice, I’ll try to give you one. If you don’t want solutions but only vent, then you can do that.”
She squeezed his hand.
“And you don’t have to be sorry for crying in front of me. There will probably be a moment where I cry in front of you. And seeing you cry… I’m glad that you’re not a stone wall who doesn’t show emotions. And with what happened… I understand.”
“I’m a mess.”
“No.”
“You’re just going to tell me no?”
His voice cracked with a small smile, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Until you understand.”
She leaned against his shoulder, thumb rubbing his knuckles.
“It… doesn’t bother you? That I talk about my…wife like that? Wearing the ring, talking about… losing our baby, still having all this stuff?”
“No. Because I understand that life isn’t a straight line. Grief isn’t either. And sure while others would be bothered, I think I just can’t expect to erase your past. Just like you can’t expect to erase mine. She was important to you and I get that. And you’re mature about it. And the fact that you’re actually asking me if it’s bothering me shows that you care about us.”
“Us in the sense of…” He gestured between him and Samira. “Like, us? Right here?”
“Right here. Everyone has their package. You have yours, I have mine. And talking about our packages help.”
“You talk like my therapist.”
“He helps, doesn’t he? So I take it as a compliment.”
“Yeah… He does. Yeah, take the compliment, I guess.”
He leaned against her now, pressing his forehead against her temple.
“You’re a saint,” Jack whispered against her skin.
Then he sighed, lifting his head to look around.
“Gotta finish the cabinet…”
Samira kept his hand in hers, her thumb still brushing over his knuckles.
“Just a few minutes,” she whispered.
“Alright.”
Jack kept sitting there with Samira, still holding the zebra in his hand, stroking the fur in silence. Every now and then, he still chokes on a few silent sobs but the tears started drying on his cheeks.
Samira didn’t judge.
Didn’t shush him.
Didn’t tell him to stop or get over it.
She let him be.
She kept holding his hand, holding him close.
Just staring at the zebra with him in silence.